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Ofo and Mobike are probably not going to have permits continued after the current pilot, so they'd be fools to keep operations in DC going.

That leaves only the operators owned by or partnered with whatever we're calling those apps these days: Social Bicycles (Jump and non-motorized) is owned by Uber, Lime (bikes, e-bikes, scooters) has partnered with Uber, and Motivate (traditional docked municipal partnerships like CaBi) is owned by Lyft.

Maybe my tinfoil hat has slipped a bit, but this is starting to look like an unhealthy amount of control of for-hire transportation modes in the hands of just a couple of companies for whom the actual job of transporting people is secondary.

Ofo and Mobike are probably not going to have permits continued after the current pilot, so they'd be fools to keep operations in DC going.

That leaves only the operators owned by or partnered with whatever we're calling those apps these days: Social Bicycles (Jump and non-motorized) is owned by Uber, Lime (bikes, e-bikes, scooters) has partnered with Uber, and Motivate (traditional docked municipal partnerships like CaBi) is owned by Lyft.

Maybe my tinfoil hat has slipped a bit, but this is starting to look like an unhealthy amount of control of for-hire transportation modes in the hands of just a couple of companies for whom the actual job of transporting people is secondary.

I'm disappointed Mobike isn't continuing. It for a long time had the most bikes in my area. LimeBike seems to have mostly abandoned bikes in favor of scooters. And if only those companies you mentioned survive, we're back to docked bicycles (which almost never work for me) or electric bicycles (which are great for climbing big hills, but overkill -- and often unavailable -- for a mile or two on the flat).

I'm disappointed Mobike isn't continuing. It for a long time had the most bikes in my area. LimeBike seems to have mostly abandoned bikes in favor of scooters. And if only those companies you mentioned survive, we're back to docked bicycles (which almost never work for me) or electric bicycles (which are great for climbing big hills, but overkill -- and often unavailable -- for a mile or two on the flat.

...or maybe dockless CaBi's. (I saw on the Twitter that in NYC, Citi Bike - operated by Motivate - is taking over ofo's place in the upcoming Bronx pilot, which will be alongside Jump.)

Based on their appearance at the DC BAC a few weeks ago, I suspect this is seasonal. It sounded like they expect to wind down the scooters and bring out more bikes as the weather gets colder.

(I don't recall the particular numbers, but apparently the scooters get significantly more use, on a rides per day per vehicle basis—like 5 for the scooters vs less than 1 for the bikes…—so as long as people are going to use the scooters, especially while they've got such a low unit cap imposed by DDOT, it's worth it for them to have more scooters out.)